


solid ground

by besselfcn



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Derealization, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Psychosis, Self-Esteem Issues, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: “What’s wrong?”He looks up. “Mm?”Martin is staring at him with an intensity that Jon can only think to describe as ferocious. “You’re thinking,” Martin says slowly, “very loudly.”
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 14
Kudos: 181





	solid ground

**Author's Note:**

> Additional Notes:
> 
> \- Jon's exact diagnosis is not specified but could fall under a wide range of Cluster B personality disorders & similar (e.g. bipolar, BPD, schizophrenia).   
> \- the "unhealthy relationships" tag is for the past jon/georgie  
> \- Note also that this fic is filtered through Jon's narration and is not necessarily, like, objective in any way.

After the Spiral domain, Basira insists upon what she calls _time away from all this nonsense_ and states she’s going for a walk, though where and for what purpose she refuses to say. Jon did not bother clarifying which nonsense, nor remind her that neither _time_ or _away_ existed any longer; he figured she probably had figured all of that out on her own. 

It leaves him and Martin rooted in one place, anyway, with neither a statement to take nor a monster to subdue, and Jon’s mind, as it itches always to do these days, wanders. 

It wanders inwards for once, as Martin unwraps a protein bar next to him and experimentally chews before sighing and spitting it back out. To the smell of antiseptic and the image of a face, gaunt and startlingly free of scars, staring at him from a distorted panel of sheet metal —

“What’s wrong?”

He looks up. “Mm?”

Martin is staring at him with an intensity that Jon can only think to describe as _ferocious._ “You’re thinking,” Martin says slowly, “very loudly.”

Jon blinks. Around him, the edges of the world blink too; shudder and shake like mirages on a long stretch of road. He realizes the sound he hears is a violent static settling back into the atmosphere. 

“Sorry,” he says.

Martin reaches out his hand; Jon absently grasps for it. It feels more warm and solid than anything else does; more than he suspects anything ever really will. “What is it, Jon?”

Jon lets a laugh tumble out. “Would you like my statement?”

Martin does not do him the courtesy of a smile. Instead, he squeezes Jon’s hand. 

“No,” Martin says. “I just want to hear whatever it is you want to tell me.”

Everything, Jon thinks. In that moment, in any handful of moments, he would tell Martin everything. He would _give_ him everything. 

He exhales and says, “Do you know Georgie once took me to that sort of place?”

Martin’s pulse quickens; his breath catches in his throat. Jon feels these things as if they live inside his own body; the physical sensations of anxious worry.

“Not quite that bad,” Jon adds hurriedly. “Not bad at all, really — very, ah, average. In terms of mental facilities. But I still try not to think of it often.”

He does not add what Martin already knows — that it is painful for him, these days, to not think of things.

Instead he closes his eyes, and grounds himself in the feeling of the dirt that shifts beneath his feet, and does his best to not start at the very beginning. 

“I was a year or so out of uni,” he starts, and already feels himself fighting the rhythm of it. “Had been dating Georgie for two years at that point. She’d already seen me through — a lot. I was never… well. I was not particularly _well managed,_ I suppose. Got through my degree mostly on all-night writing sessions and copious amounts of stimulants. I think it was what Georgie liked about me, at first. The unpredictability.”

He stops, to look at Martin, and to check to see that he can. Martin’s face is carefully placid, the look he puts on when he’s being terribly stubborn. 

Jon clenches his fist at his side; in and out. He sighs. “But I had a degree program. Something to channel all of that energy at. When I left it it was probably just a matter of time. And it wasn’t — it didn’t take very long. I wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t really eating properly. Couldn’t keep a job because I could hardly remember I _had_ a job. I could hardly remember I was a _person_ sometimes — regularly forgot things that mattered or made up things that had never happened. I spent a week once convinced Georgie and I had met a few months before on holiday in Edinburgh and was terribly irritated with her when she kept correcting me.”

It is not fair, he tells himself, to give these things to Martin and hold the rest of it back. To leave out the parts that do not paint him as a tragedy but as the villain. The times he would disappear for days at a time and reappear begging to be let back into Georgie’s flat, even though he told her he never would see her again. The car he wrecked with Georgie’s name on the license and no funds to pay for it so she ate the cost herself. The weeks he would spend high, frantically rearranging Georgie’s bookshelves to make them make _sense_ , so lost in his mania and so frightening to leave alone that she lost her job, too, calling in sick to care for him. 

It is not fair. But he will tell Martin one day; he swears. He hopes. He just can’t yet bring himself to ruin this, too. 

“I was up for about fifty hours straight at one point when she finally made me go,” he says. “She sat me down while I was attempting to convince her we ought to move out of London and into the countryside because time wouldn’t move quite so _fast_ there and she asked me, _Do you think it’s time you went to the hospital, Jon?_ ”

Her eyes were bloodshot and her voice was shaking; he realized only days later that she had been crying. 

“The way she said it — I don’t know what it was. But I realized she said it because she felt if I didn’t go, then I might die. And I think that was enough to make me realize I agreed with her.”

He remembers little of it. He remembers sitting in his flat, and sitting in a taxi, and sitting in a waiting room chair with a bright red wristband on. He remembers nothing in between. He could look, now, he supposes. He does not.

“We broke up then, you know,” he says, almost a laugh. “I was sitting in Accident and Emergency and I turned to her and I said, _do you think it might be best for us if we ended this relationship now?_ And she said, all just as cordially, _I think it might be._

“She still visited. Every day I was there, almost two weeks. Until I was on enough antipsychotics that I was deemed capable of functioning in polite society.”

This too he leaves out: the months that followed, the rotating cycle of clinicians and psychiatrists and psychologists who did their best to get under control a thing that did not want to be controlled. This too he leaves out: stretches of lost time alone in his one-bedroom flat learning how to live without the enduring patience of Georgie, knowing that she was learning to live without the angry chaos of himself.

This too he leaves out: he did not find nor feel capable of keeping stable employment until he was recruited by one Elias Bouchard to work as an Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute.

“It was alright,” he concludes, lamely. “All in all. I don’t remember it _fondly,_ but I think — well. I’m sure it saved my life.”

Martin is silent, except for where his teeth grind together, the fine scraping of bone in the back of his mouth. Jon feels the ache in his temporomandibular.

“I never noticed you were on medications,” Martin says. Jon realizes with a start that he sounds guilty.

“Oh,” Jon says. “Oh. Yes, well. I haven’t — ah. I haven’t taken them since the Unknowing.”

Martin’s mouth opens. It closes. “You haven’t needed them?”

Jon cannot stop the laugh that leaves his mouth. “Martin,” he says, “I haven’t even needed to _eat_.”

Martin looks for a second like he might be ill. 

Then, miraculously, he laughs.

“Well, that’s one way to cure your mental illnesses, isn’t it?” he says. “Just get blown to bits as part of a spooky apocalypse ritual, that’ll sort you right out.”

Jon feels a smile start on his mouth; it works its way into his chest, until it bursts out as a laugh as well, and he is pulling Martin into a hug, and he thinks he might cry if he didn’t feel so wonderfully, untouchably light.

When Basira comes back shortly after they walk on, and Martin says little else about it — except that, later, when he thinks she’s out of earshot again, he leans over and whispers to Jon, in the middle of the wasteland expanse, _hey. You know what? I’m glad you’re here._

**Author's Note:**

> Find me places @besselfcn


End file.
